The occasional travellers: Berlin

An uneventful train trip to Berlin, thank goodness, and we're in a great little apartment right in the centre of town.

I found it hard to get a grip on this city though. It's edgy and eclectic and open-minded, full of restaurants and bars and shopping and things to do. But it's also a city that hasn't just acknowledged its dark history: the past is front and centre and on every street corner. The Berlin Wall is a tangible presence on street after street, its former route outlined in a double row of cobblestones that run under the traffic. Large portions of the wall still exist as living street art galleries, and the 'death strip' between East and West Berlin is now often parkland - sometimes memorial, sometimes petting zoo or volleyball court.

There are museums and memorials everywhere that unflinchingly tell the story of the Third Reich and the Holocaust. The Topography of Terror museum is on the very site of the Gestapo headquarters. The Jewish memorial covers nearly 20000 sq m, row after row of grey coffin-shaped slabs that you can easily get lost in.

So it's kind of a confronting place to visit in a lot of ways, and many of the things we did still had a connection to the city's history. We did a bike tour this followed the route of the Wall, and saw an incredible art installation at Checkpoint Charlie (every photo of which is dominated by the McDonalds in the background) that put us 4m high on scaffolding and gave a realistic impression of looking from West Berlin over the wall into the death strip and the East.

We did an underground tour that took us into an air raid shelter beneath a subway station, where thousands of Berliners took shelter before and during the Battle of Berlin. In some areas of the city, nothing is older than the 1990s, because there was nothing left after the war and it has taken that long to rebuild.

We also made a trip to the peaceful Commonwealth War Cemetery outside Berlin to visit the grave of Col's uncle, Jack, who died as a 21 year old pilot officer during World War I. It was a special and moving thing to be able to visit, particularly on Pam's behalf, since Berlin was essentially closed to the world when she might last have been able to visit her brother's grave.

Of course, we also ate some good German food - Col finally got his pork knuckle! And in recognition of the multicultural character of the city, we also ate Spanish, Mexican and Italian 😀